New sixth form block for Kingsbury School comprising of 3 classrooms

Lightweight Steel-Frame Three Classroom Permanent Building Background

Kingsbury School in rural north Warwickshire needed space to accommodate their new sixth form provision. The school sought a more sustainable answer than hiring prefabricated portable classrooms.

Solution

A tendering process was undertaken based around the low environmental impact requirements in part L of the Building Regulations. The school opted for a fully insulated, heated, permanent structure which is fully compliant with simplified building energy model (SBEM) calculations.

The new three-classroom building was designed from first principles and took 15 weeks of on-site construction which minimised disruption to the school.

The sustainability target special features include

• secondary internal lining with 40mm insulated foam board
• insulated floor slab
• underfloor heating
• primary heating from an air-source heat pump

Customer Comments

Headmaster Simon Cotton commented, “Sustainability is a key element of this project so we sought tenders on this basis. Smart-Space came back with a competitive proposal that balanced the use of innovative technology with more conventional approaches to give us a functional and highly efficient building within budget.”

Mr Cotton added, “We will start the new school year with 35 new sixth form students and three new classrooms dedicated to food technology, textiles and psychology. This will ease up space in the school and help us toward our eventual aim of 150 post 16 students.

The new building is the second on this site from Smart-Space, following a sports hall that they provided two years ago. Site works were, as previously, well-coordinated and the whole package came together quickly and as promised. We also have a new building that is itself a practical demonstration for our students of the application of technology to achieve sustainability.”